JESUS SAVES? WHAT DID HE SAVE US FROM?

I’ve walked this way so many times. Yet new graffiti pops up on the side of the building telling me that Jesus Saves. And I think to myself, yes well, what did Jesus save us from?

The answer is death. He saves us from death! How so, you ask? It’s true we’re all in the process of slowly dying every day and no one has yet discovered the secret to immortality. But each of us have been given a ticket to play the game of life before we die. Some of us play it well, spread joy where ever we go, and hope to leave the place a bit better than when we found it. Others play the game hard, build up their small powerful empires, and think they’ve achieved success. We in North American and in Europe live in a world of wealth. Even our poverty levels are a high standard of living compared to the poor in third world countries. So we’re all happy right? No, we aren’t.

We have the means to live life well…but most of us don’t have a good reason to live it.

Whoever you think Jesus was, he came to save us from dead unfruitful meaningless lives. He gave up his life to show us the way to live ours. He set down celestial standards to follow so our happiness becomes a by-product of our actions. When we merge into the presence of his Spirit, our hearts open to life’s rich purpose and meaning. Cherish and hold this Spirit close and it will empower you.

That’s how Jesus saves each of us right now, one at a time. But what about after death? We live and we die. We’re mortal beings inhabiting our planet. In the Christian story, we were chased out of the garden before we could eat from the tree of eternal life.

But can you conceive supernatural beings out in the universe (or as we used to say, up in the heavens), that are intelligent enough to have implemented the state of immortality for themselves? I can! Now we’re talking about god-beings, angels, dare I say extraterrestrials? If Jesus Christ was, who he said he was, a son and a member of the Godhead, then he had the authority to bestow this gift to human beings.

But why would Jesus or God want to do that? As a race, homo sapiens are miserable specimens in the category of living creatures. We kill each other for greed. We’re capable of genocide for our beliefs. We’re destroying the very planet that sustains our life. No, God is not going to grant eternal life to a whole violent species and let them propagate all over the galaxies for eternity. That’d be horrible!

And so Jesus, the ambassador from a heavenly planet, came to present a celestial proposal to humanity with this message:

You people of Earth: Live by celestial standards, love God, love your neighbour as yourself. Then you can be saved!

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV

A quote from the book: The Celestial Proposal: Our Invitation to Join the God Kind, Chapter 7,Levels in the Life Game, page 118.
In the spiritual realm of Great Ones and angels, Jesus’s crucifixion was even more of a phenomenal event than it was on earth. No immortal being had ever, temporarily died before!